A game that lies to you while telling you to forget about it and just admire the world.
That's how I would summarize Outward in one sentence, and I suspect this review will get a lot of hate from people who really love Outward. Despite the fact that I still recommend this game—and even bought it for two friends—I really do have a lot of issues with it.
The world is gorgeous and the village by the sea that we live in, Cierzo, is my second favorite village in all of gaming. It’s hard to beat the perfection that is Cassardis after all. But man, it’s gorgeous. I’d want to live in Cierzo. Cierzo lies in the region known as Chersonese, with Conflux Mountain sitting firmly in the middle of it. Conflux Mountain is home to one of the world's many leylines, allowing those willing to surrender some of their essence to wield magic. Because of this, residual magic seeps from the mountain and has enchanted the grass to take on a shifting purple color. When the wind blows, watching the grass ripple with its shifting, multicolored spectrum is certainly a sight to behold.
It’s gorgeous.
From Chersonese, a wanderer may wander to the Enmerkar Forest or follow the pilgrim road to visit Monsoon in the Hallowed Marsh where the Living God Elatt is said to reside in. To the far east beyond Enmerkar lies the Abrassar Desert and the Holy Nation of Levant, a kingdom that prides itself on welcoming all sorts of people who feel they have no future elsewhere. However, this has led to overpopulation and famine. Be useful, or don’t eat. To the far South lies the noble city of Scirocco, famed for their excellent weapon smithing and the fact that they live and use the lava of three volcanoes named The Three Brothers.
Supposedly Harmattan and the Antique Plateau is somewhere to the North between Enmerkar Forest and Hallowed Marsh but there’s no way you can walk over there. You can only hitch a ride using one of the many Soroborean caravans. Beyond this, there are even more villages and cities, but they aren't there to be visited; they're there to make the map feel alive.
The soundtrack is great. Some songs are a miss and others are phenomenal. Personal favorite goes to Cierzo Daytime, Caldera daytime and Caldera combat. Especially the Caldera combat music. It absolutely screams Utawarerumono to me which is probably not the intention but it’s what my brain thinks. I absolutely adore that song. Caldera daytime in general is extremely soothing to listen to. I'll definitely buy the soundtrack someday.
Right, now we’re done with all the positives. I’ll lay into it now.
The map is nonsensical and frequently throws you off-course because the intended distance on the map doesn’t correspond to the actual world distance ( which I suppose may be intended ) so before you learn the map properly you will lock your eyes on the WRONG landmarks. And then comes the worst part. The world is FULL of Invisible ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ walls, EVERYWHERE. Every time you think you can take a short cut-BAM, INVISIBLE WALL. It gets so ridiculous and so infuriating after a while that you think you’ll go crazy. Why are there so many invisible walls? Were they afraid people would want to ignore half the world and run over the mountains?
Aside from that, the story is just bad. The writing just isn’t very good. It certainly has its golden moments, and there are some genuine moments in the game that stand out to me as, “Yeah, I like this. This is a really interesting concept.” But it just doesn’t go anywhere. The game is advertised as a normal person can achieve greatness, that you aren’t a hero. This couldn’t be further from the truth and a certain fight you can engage in will basically just point out that yeah, you were always meant for greatness. Like the writer couldn’t leave it alone and just, had to sprinkle it in. I won’t spoil it here so I’ll just tell you how you find it instead: You need to complete the game, and start doing the secret bonus arenas. There, you’ll find the truth. And that absolutely killed the story to me, completely.
There’s these several factions at play you can join, only one per playthrough aside from Scirocco for reasons you’ll find out yourself. To summarize these up with one word, it would be: Tradition, Backstabbing, Truth, and Politics. Not good enough? Then alternatively; Community, Freedom, Sacrifice and Ambition. These four would represent the Blue Chamber which is located in Berg, Levant which is located in Abrassar, Monsoon located in the Hallowed Marsh, and Soroborean Academy located in Harmattan. I presume in an attempt to make you feel like you create an appropriate roleplay character, each gives you different special skills depending on how well you fulfill a mission. The problem arises when one is largely superior to the other three factions.
But by far, the worst design decision came with the DLC The Three Brothers which focuses on Caldera and Scirocco. The area, is alright, the music as I said is phenomenal. But whose great idea was it to force the player to build up an entire town and LIMIT the amount of special buildings you can make? You get subsequently, a lot of places, and no place because all buildings take up a huge space and yet mountains in the way constantly. And despite all this space, there’s just no point to it because the game has a hard cap on how many buildings you can ever build at max. Oh you decided to build this special building instead of that one? Well I guess you’re screwed now, punk! And that is before you have to collect SIX rare materials, that drop from I think four different gathering points, each which can drop five other kind of materials, with a small chance of giving you what you want and need, not to mention the absurd gold you need to have to do this. Now add to the fact that there are FOUR different spawn layouts that can occur and each location that may spawn one of this gathering points is RANDOM, across the ENTIRE ZONE.
This, is awful. It’s so awful that when a friend of mine heard it, they just refused to ever even humor the thought of doing It. Even watched people who stream this game just feel the cold sweat drip at the thought of Caldera. It’s not fun, it’s a waste of time, it’s insulting to the players who played up until this point and it’s infuriating.
And one last point I have to rant about. The fact that the game intends for you to run around and bounce 4-5 different type of weapons just to ensure you can inflict the direct weakness on the right type of enemy, while keeping up with food and potion requirements to buff damn near before any fight, and best is if you sacrifice a little of yourself for magic just so you can always cast self-buffs. Don’t even pretend you want to go with bows and arrows because that’s 4-5 different bows as well you need to carry, and 7 different arrow types but ONLY if you got the right building type in Scirocco otherwise you’re screwed out on getting different arrows aside from flame arrows. And if that wasn’t enough, there are finished arrow types in the game’s code that work and are excellent that you will never get to use.
One thing I really wish this game did and it proved to me that this game isn’t Freelancer, is the fact that Levant while suffering from a famine, don’t pay more for food. In fact, aside from a minor economic event early in the game, no one gives a damn what you have to sell. For example, Scirocco are known for their weapons as they produce Damascene grade weapons. You’d think that maybe, Berg or Monsoon would pay premium for an influx of this. Nope! It’s a case of when the underlying plot doesn’t mean ♥♥♥♥ in the rules of the game and that is a major disconnect.
So yeah, I got a few chips on my shoulders with this game.
Having 100% the game, I will not return to it again.
It just isn’t Dragon’s Dogma to me. Nor Freelancer.
But it was a beautiful time.
